Corners’ graphic design work exemplifies the beautiful language of Han-gul

Seoul-based graphic design studio Corners puts the client first. Its tailored practice, led by founding designers Hyojoon and Daewoong, crafts each project around the client’s needs and direction. That being said, Hyojoon says Corners’ “favourite kinds of projects are ones where we can work with people who can talk about design and projects clearly," he tells It’s Nice That. Along with two Risograph printing machines and 23 different coloured drums, the studio has a broad output with a particular interest in print and its manufacturing process.

Corners’ designs are always clear. Colour is not used in excess, only to accentuate a sense of character through an overarching identity. An example of this is Art is Form, an identity for an educational exhibition at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art which showcased the works of contemporary artists whose work originates “from a line to forms of nature.” Hyojoon goes on to say, “We wanted to show the movement of lines and the movement of screens in a simple, clear way.” Through the use of basic graphics and fluid layouts, the identity is composed through elements of the keyword ‘Form’ in various bold lines.”

With a design ethos of “we reveal and sometimes hide”, Corners’ designs centre on strong typography that double-up as pictorial compositions; language is “sometimes hidden” amidst a picture of type. As Korean glyphs are uniform in size, Corners exploits the consistency of rigid line, often underlining a bold graphic with quadrilateral blocks of colour or with muted colours from the Risograph drum. In other designs, certain glyphs are stretched horizontally or vertically, elongating the matchstick-like lines to exaggerate the sleek elegance of the Korean written language, known as Han-gul.

Utilising the lines of Han-gul, not only as a means of language but also as an expressive composition in itself, Corners is a studio that composes typographic design to look simple and effortless. Its designs fundamentally draw out the visual pleasures of Han-gul, the glyphs are straightforwardly depicted to assert the delicate balance of the written language that needs no other visual support than the well-designed letterforms themselves.